Marnie Stern

Marnie Stern

Emo's Lounge, Saturday, March 17

Marnie Stern's debut, In Advance of the Broken Arm, is a one-two punch of lightning-fast guitar virtuosity and dizzying vocals – prog meets avant-garde. How did she translate that fire into a live set when it was just her up there alone? With blond hair cascading over a bandana, the petite Stern played over her CD, which seems strange considering Hella's Zach Hill, who produced and drummed on Broken Arm, was in town. She would have benefited from a little accompaniment. Stern's technical prowess is impressive, composed of intricate finger-tapping and stop/start crunch, but the sight of her playing over an iPod lost a good portion of the crowd. After five songs, her high-pitched vocals and increasingly washed-out guitar began to grate, and her chops couldn't quite keep up with the music. Yet as Stern herself sang, "Keep on, keep at it!" With more layers, this could break more than arms.